Android

r/android comment section giving the expected behavior as usual. These news sites know how to be a puppet master, I'm telling ya.

Webite wants to push pro Pixel discussion:

Proceeds to drop a article with a sensationalist title that triggers said Pixel owners.

Comment section is immediately filled with folks declaring how great their Pixel is.

This tactic flip flops between OEMS. It's generally in Samsungs favor but not always.

Disclaimer: Idgf what phone you own. I'm only speaking on what is painfully obvious to me.

My pixel 7 Pro's vector motion sensor is broken. How the hell does that even happen? I've never even heard of it and there's like nothing online about it.

I can't do anything that requires tracking how the phone is moved- no compass calibration, no Map's guidance arrow, etc.

There have been some strange issues with my 8 pro that resemble hardware connection issues or even the start of bad memory chunks. (The display glitches are mentioned in the article, actually.)

The new screen capture feature is buggy as all hell and is prone to buffer issues after long periods of spot translation.

All I know that really surprised me is I'd been disgusted with nothing phone 1 constantly rebooting for no reason since an update (still does it).

When I complained on a reddit sub about it I got a ton of replies saying it's normal and not as bad as the pixel phones.

I've nowhere to go with that people are defending a completely unstable buggy phone and I've owned half a dozen androids before that and never seen any of them just randomly restarting.

Largely exaggerating bugs. If it happens to you that sucks, but I've never actually met anyone in the real world running into these bugs. This is "your holding it wrong" writing designed to rile up nerds.

My Motorola Edge 30 is fantastic and the best phone I've ever had. I think the massive focus on Samsung and Pixel phones are paid and bought for by ad companies.

My Pixel 7a's battery life was so terrible I just gave up on the phone. I was literally charging it 2 times a day from sub-10% to 100% with light use (no games, no intense apps, under 2h SoT for the full day). I lost 7%+ per hour idle. Days when I actually needed to use my phone, I'd need to bring my charger for a third mid-day top up to 100%.

I bought a Sony Xperia 10 V to replace it. It's not perfect (it doesn't support all the NA carrier bands so signal is a bit spotty in big stores), but the battery life is amazing. Same usage patterns and I only go from 80% to 50% most days. I only 100% charge once/month for battery health. I frequently go 1½-2 days without charging. I don't know how well it plays games, but with 8GB RAM, it's snappy with app multitasking. Oh, and I can plug it into my car (3.5mm). And it's a 68mm wide, so quite easy to use one-handed.

I had been buying Google phones exclusively since the early Nexus days, but I'm unlikely to buy one again. At least for the foreseeable future.

I hope Google can figure their shit out. It's bad for everyone when Apple and Samsung capture increasingly large marketshare, and Google's fuck ups are turning people off smaller vendors.

I sometimes wonder how much Pixel hype is just inertia from when other manufacturers had terrible skins and Pixel was the only way for most to get a stock android experience.

Nowadays third party software has come a long way and from what I can see the pixel's main selling point is it's cameras.

It's interesting, it's because of such articles and comments about the various issues (mostly battery life, and sometimes connectivity) that I didn't consider Pixel for my new phone.

It's sad because they are supposed to be the Android top devices. Motorola seems decent nowadays, Asus Zenfone got a lot of backlash recently about the locked bootloader, but at least their phones are compact and have audio jacks. Even Xiaomi I could consider with DNS blocking to stop the trackers, their quality-price ratio is quite good, especially second hand.

Google Pixels suck.

The 4a did everything right. Plastic cover? Yeah you use a protective case anyways.

The 6a that I now have is worse. I sent back a 7pro because it was so horrible. I dont want a tablet, I want a phone.

the camera

is worse! I cant believe that but I compared pictures. At least the selfie Camera is absolute garbage.

size, shape, materials

• the phone is huge
• its rectangle size is worse to hold in the hand
• the 6a had some kind of plastic which is durable. The 7pro I had has a glass back? Wtf why?

fingerprint sensor

is so much worse. Why put it behind a display? I actually replaced one, so that is not the problem. But you cant unlock directly, they are waaay less reliable and you often need to create duplicate scans. Compare that to the damn 4a (and all other fingerprint sensors of that time) that just worked instantly.

No headphone jack

This is such a pain as an audiophile. I have awesome headphones and of course they are on a cable.

Bluetooth is factiually worse.

• It takes forever to connect (apple devices alway connect first for example).
• the controls for pause etc. take like a second to work
• you always broadcast your Bluetooth ID around
• you are attackable, like the iPhone DDOS attack
• you need more tiny battery powered devices for nothing
• headphones are always more expensive and often have worse audio quality

If you want to use normal headphones, the only good DACs are by Google and Samsung, and at least german electronic markets (!) dont have them.

And if you use a DAC, this works over USB. If you need to allow random USB devices all the time, this means you are also attackable through a cable.

My Pixel 4a is a bit slow, but the battery still lasts over a week in idle. I use it as an alarm clock now as its insecure.

I have not tested a Pixel 8, and the hardware for sure sounds appealing. But if Google continues this shitty path of useless "inventions" like the Fingerprint sensor behind the Glass, unnecessary huge and fragile phones, and purposeful decrease in security by needing Bluetooth all the time, while actively contributing to E-Waste, I will never recommend them.